


hide our hearts.

by nessasnemesis



Category: Red Queen Series - Victoria Aveyard
Genre: Car Sex, Eventual Romance, F/M, Forbidden Love, Mare Barrow - Freeform, Maven calore - Freeform, Problematic Prince, Slow Burn, Toxic Relationship, UST, Unrequited Love, it is what it is, mareven, the tension is off the charts, who doesn’t love a bit of a toxic ship?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-09
Updated: 2020-08-09
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:21:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25802029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nessasnemesis/pseuds/nessasnemesis
Summary: "You better hide that heart of yours. It won't lead you anywhere you want to go."My interpretation of Mare and Maven's moment in the car, which takes place during Chapter 14 of King's Cage.
Relationships: Mare Barrow/Maven Calore, Mare x Maven - Relationship, Maven Calore/Mare Barrow, Maven x Mare - Relationship
Comments: 5
Kudos: 108





	hide our hearts.

**Author's Note:**

> "undoing." by me is also maven/mare.  
> let me know which one you prefer ty xo

Maven Calore is not his own self. He told me as much. He is a construct, a creation of his mother's additions and subtractions. A mechanical, a machine, soulless and lost. What a horror, to know that someone like this holds our fates in the palm of his quivering hand.

"It will be no loss, not truly," he drones on to distract us both. "Our military economy will simply turn its attention to the Scarlet Guard. And then whoever we decide to fear next. Whatever avenue is best for population control—"

If not for the manacles, my rage would certainly turn the transport into a heap of electrified scrap. Instead, I jump forward, lunging, hands stretched out to grab him by the collar. My fingers worm beneath the lapels of his jacket and I seize fabric in both fists. Without thinking, I shove, pushing, smashing him back into his seat. He flinches, a hand's breadth from my face, breathing hard. He's just as surprised as I am. No easy thing. I immediately go numb with shock, unable to move, paralyzed by fear.

He stares up at me, eye to eye, lashes dark and long. I'm so close to him I can see his pupils dilate. I wish I could disappear. I wish I were on the other side of the world. Slowly, steadily, his hands find mine. They tighten on my wrists, feeling manacle and bone. Then he pries my fists from his chest. I let him move me, too terrified for anything else. My skin crawls at his touch, even beneath gloves. I attacked him. Maven. The king. One word, one tap on the window, and a Sentinel will rip out my spine. Or he could kill me himself. Burn me alive.

"Sit back down," he whispers, every word sharp. Giving me one single chance.

So I take that chance.

Just not as how either one of us expected. My lips claim his, crashing down with a current of emotions I couldn't quite place. The strange familiarity of his lips on mine shocks me more than the action. Our eyes interlock, as a mixture of confusion, slow simmering rage and hesitation flitters in his gaze.

He's the first to submit, releasing his hold on my wrists and transferring the embrace to the sides of my face, surprisingly soft, matching my desire with his lips.

He wants this. _Me_. To my horror and as much as I hated to admit — I wanted him just as much. I was betraying my cause, Cal, and myself, but I didn't want to stop.

Maven's lips burned against my own. He gently gripped my hips and lifted me effortlessly from the seat beside his and placed me on him, my dress riding up my legs, my thighs on either side of his.

Moments before I was in this exact position with a different sort of flame burning inside of me. I gasp against his lips in fraught realisation, pulling my face away from his.

I slapped him across his face. His head moved with the momentum of the blow and stayed that way. This time he seemed almost as helpless as me to react. His hands dropped and lay still by the sides of my thighs, a gentle warmth emitting from them. His chest rising and falling, breathing heavily beneath me.

“I can't." I whisper more to myself than him, remembering how I uttered the ghost of those words to another Calore brother not so long ago. Similar to then, I knew my eyes betrayed me. Even now I could feel tears of anger and regret, tears I swore not to cry.

He finally turned to me, his startling blue eyes piercing my own brown ones. My breathing grew more painful the longer I sat there — each breath jarring and stoking all at once. I needed to get it together. I needed to collect my thoughts—

Maven gently pulled my hair aside, I tensed slightly, holding my breath for the uncertainty of what was to come. The small touch nearly undid me. His lips brushed the curve of my neck. Blood roared in my ears.

"It's okay," he murmured softly, trailing his fingers down my arm in slow, torturous strokes. My head fell onto his shoulder, my eyes fluttering closed, as his lips continued to move against my neck. A low, breathless sound escaped the back of my throat.

I didn't know what was happening. How did I start this? How _could_ I start this? How was this happening? What was I doing? Why were _we_ doing this? This was Maven. Sick, twisted, cruel Maven. A cruel prince. _No. A king._

Anyone can betray anyone.

But I couldn't lie to myself any longer. To lie that I didn't crave his attention, his laughter, his . . . touch. _I wanted him to touch me_. I wanted the boy I laughed with, told secrets to, cried to. The boy _behind_ the construction created to appease every part of me. I knew a part of it was real. It must have been. _It had to have been_. If he defied everyone's warnings of having me here, beside him — on top of him.

I was his undoing, and he was mine.

"I understand." Maven whispered against my skin, softly ushering my mind back to one single thought. _Him_. Lips parting, he trailed warm, open-mouthed kisses down the side of my throat and onto my shoulder. His tongue moved slowly, worshiping me with each stroke.

Much to my dismay, I adjusted my treacherous neck under his lips to feel more of him, all over me. I felt his smirk against my throat as he continued to trail kisses across me.

His lips suddenly stilled, and his gaze honed in on my rapidly moving chest. I moaned in protest from the loss of his mouth against my skin.

"Mare?" He whispered, a smile in his voice. His eyes dart up to mine in question as he leant up against the seat, tracing the lacing of my dress ever so slightly, asking for permission. I nod, and he languidly pulled.

We both watched as Maven's fingers moved slowly, sensuously until the front of my dress fell open. Neither of us breathed as he reached a hand up and skimmed the bare skin of my upper breast. I arched slightly into his palm, and he inhaled sharply.

Urged with renewed vigour, he swept aside the shoulders of my chemise, sending the fabric to pool around my waist. His eyes roved my naked torso hungrily, I flushed under his heated gaze.

He opened his mouth to say something, anything but nothing came out. I couldn't help but grin with satisfaction. Who knew a Red could make a Silver, a royal Silver even, speechless? But right here, right now, there were no castes. Here, we were just a boy and a girl giving one another what we could only find in each other. Salvation.

I gently pushed the cape off his shoulders watching it slip down his broad frame. I tugged the hem of his shirt from his trousers. He pulled it up over his head, mussing his black curls, before his lips came down hard against mine, and we were pressed together, skin to skin. He drew my bottom lip into his mouth and bit it gently before lifting me easily once more, and I tossed my dress aside.

His eyes burned, his flames simmering deep within — pupils dilating, the blue around them hardly visible — as they took in my stomach, my breasts, my thighs. I could sense the temperature rising around me. He seemed to as well. Using his teeth, he unlatched his flamemaker bracelets and sent them into the seats behind me. My manacles following them in one smooth motion.

This was my chance. I felt the electricity gently simmering inside me, muted, yet still there. I would never get an opportunity like this again. He was vulnerable without his bracelets. I knew that. _He knew that_. And yet, he took them off still. I could have opened that door and left, made my great escape. A risky one but still, a chance. Instead, I fumbled at the laces of his trousers.

"Your trousers." Crushing my lips against his in between breaths, "Take them off. Now." He quirked a smile up at me, the smile I used to love so. He lifted me awkwardly, stripping his trousers down his legs. I began to straddle him once more until he stopped me. Breathless, I raised my brow at him curiously.

He shook his head, a ghost of a smile lingering on his lips. "Let me give you something." He murmured, as his eyes darkened. He bent forward slowly, his eyes locked on mine and took my breast in his mouth, and I gasped. His tongue was hot, demanding. A deep, delicious ache built too quickly in my belly. "Let me love you." I shivered at his choice of words, moaning in mock agreement. I threw my head back as he savaged my breasts with his adept tongue, his lips, his teeth—

Maven pulled me down beneath him on the cushioned seats. He ran his tongue along the bottom of my lip. I shuddered and he smiled, sending shivers of electricity pulsating through my body. His kisses began to trail down my body, beginning at my jaw. Then my neck, and my collarbone, my sternum and my breasts. Retracing his steps to where he was moments prior, all across my body.

His kisses ventured lower, skimming the flesh of my stomach indulgently with his tongue. He kissed the insides of my thighs, the sensation raising goosebumps across my skin despite the warmth engulfing the two of us. Maven beamed up at me between my thighs, clearly pleased with this reaction. Then, eyes locked on mine, he lowered his mouth onto me.

His tongue explored my centre as I gripped the sides of the seat beneath me, throbbing with need. I once thought of myself as a sword made of glass, beginning to shatter — the tremors murmuring through my body in that moment was evident of that glass shattering to smithereens.

Then he was between my folds, and my hips abruptly bucked upwards from the spike of sensation. With competence, Maven moved his hands around each one of my thighs and clasped his fingers down together resting gently on my stomach, the slight pressure holding me down from writhing beneath his lips. The sensations were like nothing I had ever felt before, and I brandished electricity.

A low laugh rumbled from between my legs. I spared a glance in between my shaky breaths to look at the culprit who too, was gazing up at me. Amusement glimmered in Maven's smouldering blue gaze, his lips coated with a slight sheen and his hair tousled with finger imprints running through them. _My fingers_. This view alone could have made me reach my climax right then and there.

Any fear I may have felt at yielding this way, yielding to him, was gone, replaced only by a fervid and all-consuming need. I wanted to burn. Craved it. Needed it, and I wanted Maven to satiate that longing.

With a wink, Maven rose until our eyes were equal, then slowly, he guided himself into me. I took a sharp intake of breath as he plunged himself in deeper, right to the hilt. There was slight discomfort, but as he receded and thrusted again the pain intensified into something else, something sharp and deep and aching. The ache coiled upward, and I couldn't stop myself from kissing him, from tangling my fingers in his hair, from raking my nails down his arms.

I was close to breaking, to giving him everything, so I pressed him back lightly. His eyes widened in alarm, searching mine for any sense of uncertainty. I smiled slightly, pushing him down on the seats, beneath me. Maven's eyes softened in understanding, his breath hitched as I straddled his waist once more and sank down onto him. I arched back feeling him all around me, inside me. His hand came down in between us as he increased his pace, stroking me where our bodies met with relentless determination. This time, my breath hitched.

It hurt, this throbbing, yearning feeling in my chest. It was obliterating, dominating and more overwhelming than everything I had ever known.

Once again my eyes betrayed me. Even now I could feel tears of anger, regret, yearning — building up. A few tears escaped the pools in my eyes, spilling on our merged bodies. Maven gently clutched my cheek, drawing my eyes to his. I stifled a sob looking at his beautiful face. No scars. Not one single blemish. A boy who had been emotionally tarnished since birth. And yet, I knew that didn't excuse all of the things he had done since Elara's fraudulence. The betrayal, the unnecessary deaths, his relationship with Cal, _ours_.

"I hate you." I whispered to him, my voice barely audible as tears streamed down my face, cool against my burning skin. _A lie._ "I hate you so much." I choked out again, the strength of my emotions and our bodies moving as one, completing one another, overwhelming me.

His eyes, still aligned with mine glossed over. Gently, he took my cheeks in his hands and leant in, kissing one tear away. Then the other. My body stilled underneath his heated touch as he continued to lick away the saltwater streams cascading down my cheeks.

"I know, baby." He murmured, kissing one last tear away. "I know."

His eyes yearned, tears brimming in his own. Slowly, his lips found my own, pressing softly against them. I returned the sentiment, pushing my body against his harder, giving myself to him completely. My chest throbbed with an impossibly fervent sensation of longing I had never felt for another person before, as I rocked against him.

Everything inside me tightened, and I clung to him as he pushed me over the edge. With one final, shuddering thrust, he let go beneath me, unable to catch his breath.

He embraced his arms around me, completely undone, trembling beneath me. My chin rested atop his mussed black curls; my arms encased around his shoulders as my breathing gradually steadied.

But my heart remained constant, thumping erratically in my chest. Skin on skin, I felt Maven's own heart hammering in time with my own.

It seemed neither of us heeded his advice he said once, long ago — to hide our hearts. For they did not lead either one of us anywhere logically enduring and safe from inevitable heartache.

**Author's Note:**

> let me know your thoughts on this & thanks for reading :)  
> if you're genuinely interested in more from me lmk
> 
> 11/12 - Y'ALL i'm currently a post-war storm one shot of these two and SHEESH. keep your eyes peeled. might have to rate it an E...
> 
> All characters and the inspiration for this piece belong to Victoria Aveyard.


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